T for Twiddle

This character is special for three main reasons: he is the first actual character I remember from one of the first ever full length books I’ve read, he is this silly old man who is endearing in his behaviour, and for some reason the name fascinates me.

I remember the ten year old me getting confused by the surname Twiddle, for I had been (only then) told that twiddling meant something else entirely. So I was trying to attach the noun-verb form to my understanding of how names work, ending up with one confused combination.

It has been a little more than a decade since I last browsed through a Twiddle series book, but still, some things stay fresh in my mind – for instance, the fact that I loved Twiddle as a character because he reminded me of someone I actually knew (and of course, loved in real life).

I think this has got more to do with the memories associated with the reading experience than the character himself. It is time to revisit this series and go back to those moments of silly laughs and jokes.

The song I dedicate to this character: Humpty Dumpty (Yes, the nursery rhyme. For reasons that make me laugh even now. I remember how I took up a pen and wrote the entire poem on the back of the book that was a treasured possession of a friend *gasp* and promptly got scolded for it. But on another note, I also like how the mess with Humpty Dumpty fits too, if only vaguely, for Mr. Twiddle).